Easy tips to stop procrastinating and become more productive

I know everyone has a situation where you had an essay to finish or a test to study for, but you just couldn’t make yourself start that super important task. Procrastination is really annoying, so here’s some advice to help you finally get to work:

Ditch the useless tasks

Before you start your work, make sure there aren’t any tasks you shouldn’t be doing – by this I mean long tasks that aren’t urgent or important. The last thing you want is to is waste your time on meaningless tasks. If you can’t cross off any tasks from your to-do list, try list them in order of priority and urgency so you can workout what you have to do.

Making a schedule

If you haven’t already, please, please, please make a study schedule! They’re super easy to make, but if you’re not sure how to make one, you can check out my previous post – how to make a study schedule you’ll actually stick to. Study schedules are incredibly useful as they give you structures blocks of time to complete your work, which is much better than assuming you’ll do it soon. Also – schedule your working blocks of time to be a little longer than you actually need, since one you get your work done faster than the allocated time, you’ll feel good about getting a slightly longer break and feel more ready to go back to work after.

The “only 20 minutes” rule

What a lot of people like to do to force themselves to do a task is to tell themselves they’ll only do it for 20 minutes – that way, you can trick yourself into starting the task because it seems much shorter than it really is. If you’re lucky, you’ll get into a focused mode and work for longer than the time you set yourself, so don’t set a timer as this might interrupt your flow. If you find 20 minutes have passed and you’re still not focused, don’t worry – just take a break and come back to the task later.

Split it up

When you’ve got an incredibly long task that seems incredibly daunting, one easy thing you can do is to break it down into subcategories. For example, one of my new year’s resolutions is to learn Dutch – it sounds like a long process and like it would take an awful lot of time, but as you can see below, I’ve split it up into smaller, easier tasks so I can accomplish my goal without being overwhelmed.

Set an alarm for your break

One of the most important things you can do is set an alarm for how long you want your break to be. Without it, you’ll either keep telling yourself, “just 5 more minutes”, or you’ll completely lose track of time! An alarm acts as a stern reminder to get back to work and can help snap you out of your ‘break mindset’.

Productive procrastination

Hear me out – sometimes procrastination can be productive. If the task isn’t urgent or incredibly important, then it’s fine to procrastinate as long as you do so productively. Let me explain: what I like to do is have two tasks, both of which I’m procrastinating on, then jump between them as I get bored of them. Right now, I’m jumping between writing this post and practicing my Spanish on Duolingo. As long as you’re getting something done, it’s fine to procrastinate a little.